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CHARACTERS: "Todd"/Guide, James T. Kirk, and all volunteers
LOCATION: Medical Bay
WARNINGS: Extensive description of the Wraith feeding process, and internalized self-loathing. Possible profanity.
SUMMARY: You can never win, you can only break even. With a Wraith, you can't break even - even if you are one.

He's growing used to the fire in his bones, and the thought disgusts him more than he would dare to admit. This repetition of siphoning off a bit of life and then slowly starving again is not the way of a Queen's man. It is short-sighted - but the kine are a short-lived species, as it should only be that they cannot imagine so far into the future. Yet he has agreed to this deal, and their short-sightedness is his own. It will not be long before he starves again, and then more humans will have to sacrifice themselves to him. So this vicious cycle will begin anew.

He kneads the dark vein that winds itself abound his wrist so that it does not swell with enzyme, but he closes his fist as he does so. He can grow used to the fire in his bones, but never shall he look upon a hungry hand without shame.

Guide waits in the medical bay, squinting at the too-bright lights. When he has the strength to do so, he stands; when he hasn't, he rests, sitting as regally as one can in torn leathers.

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Under the hum of the sharp, clinical light, the places where the darkness should dip and cling to his armor seemed matt, the expensive textiles that make up the outfit only exotic, not crafted as though from the night itself. The Batman looked out of place in the bright corridors of the ship. For almost two days, he had wondered whether to wear the cape and cowl aboard the Tranquility at all, but there were times when it was needed, and perhaps the ship itself had forseen them before him.

As Bruce Wayne he couldn't make this sacrifice, but he had to know, had to satisfy himself that it wasn't the mistake the dissenters said it was. James Kirk's support had been one thing, but it had been the creature's words and then his own presentation on the network which had convinced him. Witnessing his hunger, Bruce had remembered his own. He remembered stealing to live, to survive, remembered how it felt and thought he could see it in the dark hollows where eyes should be.

He appeared without word, without warning, not even the sound of a heel on the ground, dressed to be imposing while the real predator was almost too frail to stand. It was difficult to see without feeling some kind of pity, and yet the same people who fed their dogs and cats on board barely seemed to recognise that one plight was not much different to another. For predators, another creature had to die so that another could live.

He moved closer, not speaking, standing on a ceremony of patience as the outsider, knowing this had all been done before and waiting to be initiated.

Kirk was used to seeing the strange and bizarre on the Tranquility. After meeting Sherlock Holmes, he'd geared himself up to see potentially fictional characters (since he, himself, was apparently one) or historical figures on board. But when he catches the ink dark figure out of the corner of his eye, he still does a doubletake.

Jim would be the first to admit that he had a fondness for old literature, and though he'd had his nose buried in works like Don Quixote when others were interested in comic books, even he could tell who this guy was. And okay, he'd met Robin. Hell, he'd worked with the kid during that whole fear gas problem. This shouldn't be that unusual. Masks weren't unheard of on the Tranquility.

But this man cut an impressive figure, and Kirk was so thrown by literally seeing Batman standing in medical, that he couldn't help but stare.

There's no way this is really happening. No way. Alright, admittedly, Hayley isn't frequently starstruck. She isn't frequently (read: ever) anything stuck- but there are some things that just do not happen in real life. This was supposed to be one of them. Was nothing left sacred?

Okay, she isn't really complaining (and still isn't star struck), but her gaze follows the man himself all the same. Because he isn't really a man so much as he is a shadow. It's pretty cliche, but there isn't really any other way to describe it. He's darkness. He's like a physical embodiment of night just walking through medical. It's terrifying. And also the coolest thing she has ever seen. Hayley's arm reaches out, half blind to the man at her side, if only because she refuses to tear her gaze away- and she punches at his arm. Misses twice and finally connects with haphazard enthusiasm.

"You're seeing this too, right?"

Normally, he might flinch at being punched at random, if just in a playful response. Instead, he lifts his opposite hand to bat at the punch, as though to wave off a fly- but similar to the girl at his side, Kirk doesn't wrench his gaze away now that it's fixated.

How is that even physically possible, to look and move like that?

Alright, stupid question. The Tranquility had been throwing simple things like physics out the window since they'd showed up. But still.

"Is that-?" He asks, and his voice is a little high when he cocks his head.

Edited 2012-09-26 01:54 (UTC)

"It's-" She has to say it, she has to say it and for about half of a second she has the thought that maybe maybe she really shouldn't but this is one of those moments and a movie couldn't script it better. Her fist hovers, clasped in his palm, and their eyes follow the figure as it passes them. It's small consolation that the captain's eyes are as wide as her own.

"It's the goddamn Batman."

She shouldn't have said it. It's a rule of the universe that when someone mentions his name in his vicinity - whether he can hear it or not - Bruce's attention is immediately caught. At first he merely inclines his head, letting him see that he's being watched avidly, but it's a different kind of attention to the usual curiosity. Closer to awe, perhaps.

Not that he's arrogant about it, really. The costume was built to inspire emotions in others - awe, fear, envy - that's all there is to it.

Without warning he steps away, approaching. There's no cape to swish around his heels as he walks, after all it would have just got in the way. If you have any last words, speak now or forever hold your peace.

It's entirely possible that her words worked as an invocation, because literally seconds after she's said it, he's coming toward them. Kirk, strangely, gets the sensation of being caught- even though that's ridiculous- and he quickly drops his hand from where it's been caught in Hayley's young grip.

If he stands a little straighter, like he's being approached by an admiral, Kirk doesn't mention it. He sincerely hopes the girl at his side doesn't do so either. Jim lifts his chin, it's more a greeting than anything, or as much as you can greet someone who stalks toward you with clear purpose. Jim's done nothing wrong, but even he feels a little pressured, as though he needs to live up to some kind of expectation.

She doesn't mention the change in his posture, because she mirrors it. Because they move in tandem and because her attention is largely held by the cape and cowl ensemble (alright fine, minus the cape) walking towards them. Towards them. She doesn't stop breathing, or anything ridiculous like that, but the part of her that is scrambling to process, to string together conversations over text and align them to an identity (obvious, obvious jesus how could you even miss that) is swallowed by momentary delirium. Hayley Stark this is your life, her chin has to lift to a degree that's probably laughable, but it's impossible to keep the ghost of a smile from her face.

"I take it the pot isn't hot."

Edited (i can't type anything ever) 2012-09-26 04:06 (UTC)

Bruce takes the moment to really look them over as he approaches. Hayley he'd seen in the video looking for a name; her texts had been sharp, sassy, and there was no doubt at all that she was unusually bright, for all that the intelligence hadn't seemed to diminish her optimism. A rare thing in such an environment.

Kirk, on the other hand, was a Captain, a leader among men, but still followed someone. He straightened up like a fresh cadet in the presence of a superior officer, rather than the blazing streak of pure cocksure attitude that Bruce had expected to see after his videos. So even starship captains can be pressured by theatricality--good to know.

Quicker than the captain, she's ready with words before him, and Bruce presses his lips together to keep from smiling. He likes sassy, it keeps him on his toes. His voice is bass when he speaks, but not smoker's-cough levels of gravelly. This isn't an interrogation.

"Perhaps too hot to touch, but that doesn't usually keep me from trying." A pause, and then an acknowledgement. "Captain."

For Jim, the action is less a response to theatricality than it is a gesture of respect. Even if he knows remarkably little about Gotham, he knows what Batman does and- well, Kirk will respect anyone who throws the rule book in someone's face to get shit done.

"Sir," He says, nodding his own acknowledgement. It's clear that these two have spoken before, likely somewhere on the network, but judging from Hayley's surprise his identity hadn't been revealed until now. "Thank you for coming down, I know the situation is unusual." And there is the cocky tilt to his mouth that had been missing previously, though it's incredibly wry.

In the beat that passes, where Batman's attention moves to Captain Kirk (oh god that's really a thing that just happened, isn't it-) Hayley's shoulders soften. The tension eases out, but her alertness certainly doesn't. "Yeah well, we're on a ship in an alternate reality a billion years in the future. Feeding the space alien isn't exactly the most unusual thing that's happened in the past few months." She takes the moment to glance further into the chamber, surveying the surroundings. She hasn't commented publicly on becoming a donor, but figures her presence here could really only mean one thing.

There's no sight of him yet, but given the way he'd looked when the feed began, he wasn't likely to go running around for kicks.

Unusual is probably the understatement of the century. 'A billion years' is something he considers and throws out as exactly the opposite. Laid beside Hayley's words about keeping to what she understands, he wonders why she's here, and yet he could extend the same question to almost anyone, even to the Wraith himself, and perhaps never get a suitable answer. Even his own would take too long to explain.

For now, he'll keep the questions about the process for when they speak. It would be strange, not to mention rude, to talk about him in third person.

"Listening to archive footage doesn't really convey what it must have been like to live through it." A pause. "But you're still here, still fighting. How many times have you done this?" A question for either, but directed toward Kirk. He can see the gray in his hair clearly now, and yet Bruce is confident that he himself is older. The contrast is strange.

"This as in this" and Kirk gestures to the room at large, "or the Tranquility?" But he figures Batman might like the answer to both, so he goes on to give him what he asks for. "I've been here for ten months," If he's going to calculate by the wave number, and the most recent one had been ten. It was something of a horrifying notion, but Jim couldn't linger on it and keep his sanity.

"This is the third time we've gone through this particular process." But that isn't how many times Jim has been the victim of a feeding. He won't supply that information unless asked, but somehow he doesn't think Batman will let it slide.

Bruce already knew how long Kirk had been here, just as Kirk could know how long most others on the ship had been present. Despite concealing his own numbers, he suspected he could only propose that he had arrived a month earlier, and even that was pushing it--why would he have stayed quiet so long? Yet anything that he could do to separate himself from his own identity would be preferable. It was too narrow a list, too small a pool of people; what a coincidence that only one seemed to come from Gotham.

Perhaps it would be simpler to make Bruce Wayne disappear for a little longer, or perhaps not to have come at all.

The wording of Kirk's second explanation caught his attention. It was very different to the first, laid out deliberately without any kind of evasiveness. The third time they'd been through this process, but not the feedings. No, they'd happened before.

For a moment he simply held eye contact, let Kirk know that he wasn't buying it wordlessly, and moved on.

"Have you made up the numbers every time?" Self sacrifice was something they had in common, and frankly he wouldn't be surprised if the answer was yes, despite that there were clear inherent risks. "Tell me--in the long term, what kind of effect do you think it will have on you?

Not everyone was keen to wording, but from the look Batman gives him, Kirk knows his phrasing doesn't fly under his radar. Well, he wouldn't really have expected much less from this guy, if he was who he appeared to be. But anyone else would have to put a hell of a lot of work into a get up like this from materials on the Tranquility.

His jaw flexes, just briefly, a tightening in the muscles. It's something Kirk has been avoiding saying, unless asked directly, and with Hayley at his side-

there's no avoiding it. People deserve to know what they could be losing, but in the same breath how many would recede their offer? Is a year or two worth starving someone to death? Jim's hands lift, come to rest on his hips.

"Yes, we have." A beat, "Long term effects can be the literal shortening of one's life span. It's why we aren't allowing people to volunteer more than once." Unless they know the consequences and accept them.

And that, if nothing else, explains why Kirk looks curiously older than his twenty five years.

His stare doesn't waver for a few long seconds after Kirk has finished speaking, and then the chill of it simply drops away, turning back toward the rest of the bay. Everything seems remarkably still, all of this done with an ordered dignity, despite it being literally the forces of life and death at work here.

"If you'd said anything else I wouldn't have believed you. The only thing worse than the truth when people are already afraid is a lie." Kirk hadn't lied, but he'd seen his jaw work, known he was chewing over the admission. Even so, he knows he sounds like a book of grim morals, and that everything he is is at war with the sterile environment. He silences anything else he had to say about nothing being given without sacrifice. He hasn't left yet, surely that makes his intentions clear. A few words solidify them.

"Some of us don't expect long to begin with. I'm not planning for my retirement." What he did was dangerous, and he knew the same went for Kirk. What did a year or two from the end of his life mean to him? Besides which, a flash of grey might make him look distinguished.

He watches the armored human enter the medical bay with enviable silence, and he cannot help but smile. The anonymous donor had spoken of wearing a mask to inspire fear, and here he was. He allows himself a low chuckle, a small indulgence for all the hunger he has endured until now. "I did not think that such a mask was meant to be literal," he says, grinning wolfishly.

"But this armor presents a problem," he says, his expression sobering. He points to the human's breastplate with his off hand, inspecting the material as he does. Whatever material the armor was crafted from, it was far too thick for his barbs to sink through. "If you wish to make good upon your offer, you will have to remove it."

"I don't go back on my word, Commander." Whatever ensues, it's something he asked for, something that, if he doesn't keep his word, will only cause further harm to another at some point down the road. His decision is already made, and so simple things such as asking about the process are futile, completely irrelevant. He uses the title stolen from another conversation as deliberately as he does politely.

He doesn't address the problem of the batsuit. Now he knows it has to be removed, he'll simply remove it.

"You look tired." Old, too, he thought, but not by human standards. Old like dust and stars. Tired, like only someone who had been everywhere and seen everything could be. Terrifying to most, but Bruce isn't afraid, and he knows by the chuckle, the smile, that he's shown him something new. His voice softens, low. "How long can you do this?"

He remembers hunger; his words are for the Wraith alone.

That earns the masked human a bark of bitterly amused laughter. His word has been questioned time and time again, even when the facts of his predicament make betrayal an unappealing option at best, even after showing his face - and this one human fully expects his word to be taken seriously despite hiding himself. Were he not so desperate, Guide might be more spiteful, more willing to point out the supreme irony that he is face-to-face with. He doesn't, the human under all that armor likely knows as much already.

Likewise, he refrains from commenting on his looks. He knows his face betrays his age and health, now made all the more prominent by this cycle of starvation and satiation. "I may drink as deeply as you are willing to give. If that is but a sip, I shall take but a sip; if that is more, I shall take more," he says instead.

Bruce knows that his question meant something quite different, that he was implying a flaw in the plan rather than asking how long the procedure will take, but he accepts the answer regardless. They both know it can't continue. It would be obvious to anyone in the medbay today.

So instead he inclines his head, quiet acceptance of the terms.

"I can give you a little more, I think, than others might. I'm stronger, and I heal quickly." Another pause, if only because Bruce is changing the topic slightly. "Your longevity gives you wisdom beyond your years. Cynicism too?" He's thinking of Ra's al Ghul; that knowledge can bring despair in a place without hope.

"What do you think our chances are without you?"

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ota

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lmao this is the happinest moment of my life rn

preach.

+2

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